


your eyes still haunt me to this day

by stellatiate



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Reverse Big Bang Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 02:51:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3920146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellatiate/pseuds/stellatiate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t understand why he has to nearly die to love this much. “That’s not true,” Jean says when Armin cries out, “I loved you this much already. You loved me this much already, too."</p><p> </p><p>-—armin & jean. au, deep sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your eyes still haunt me to this day

**Author's Note:**

> for the jearmin reverse bang. based on [this art](http://chimeradeimos.tumblr.com/post/118741074206/) and [another story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3893002/) based on the same art. check out both, please!

**…**  
**i.** [your grin’s the sweetest that i’ve ever seen](https://youtu.be/ojYK6CW8gdw) **[  
](https://youtu.be/ojYK6CW8gdw)**…[  
](https://youtu.be/ojYK6CW8gdw)

Dancing, a sweet summer smile. A sky falling down, a sky engulfed in flames, warm hands touching his skin. Armin feels the dream within him, knows he is living it in this moment. The sun is setting and his heart is sinking, lying at the bottom of the ocean, a discarded shell. But he smiles anyway, and dances, and ignores how sad he feels.

He wakes up to a myriad of different sensations: a gentle hand against his cheek, a strong hand against his chest, ocean air in his lungs, chilling water rushing around his waist. But Armin doesn’t panic; he blinks the sticky sea-salt from his lashes and focuses his eyes on the silhouette in front of him, pushing the sun out of his gaze.

“Hey,” a voice with grains like sand, “are you all right?”

The noise all filters in at once, and it isn’t until after the question that Armin realizes he is on a beach full of people. The sun still colors out the owner of the voice in front of him, but from behind them, he can see vaguely familiar faces crowded around the two of them. Eren, with his face twisted in displeasure, and Mikasa, with tears making tracks in the ocean salt on her face.

He opens his mouth to speak, but all he can inhale is water. Armin coughs, and everyone around him flinches except for the voice, whose hand moves to the center of his back and strikes him firmly with his palm.

“I—” He coughs, again, and feels an arm curled around his waist, “I feel—I’m fine,” his voice strains, and he descends into noisy coughs again. The sand is cold at his ankles, and it takes him a moment to realize there are rough hands in an imitation of gentleness scooping up the wet tendrils of blonde hair from his face.

Armin tries to see again, and he is rewarded with a full, worried face. Grey eyes, thin, tight lips, rosy complexion. “Come sit down at the lifeguard station,” his voice is still hoarse, and the more Armin pays attention, the more he learns; his breath comes in rapid paces, alive with a panic that seems unnecessary to Armin as he helps him stand on his feet.            

He can feel Mikasa’s nails scratching gently at the base of his spine, cool palms lingering as he wobbles to one side. Water drips across his cheeks, down the bridge of his nose, and he blinks again before he takes in his surroundings. It is still the middle of the day on the beach, but more than Eren and Mikasa are crowding around him with worry. He can see Krista and Ymir not too far away, the smaller blonde tucked by her girlfriend’s side, and a few people he doesn’t recognize watching him with a slight discomfort as well.

Before he can say anything, a quiet laugh sounds at his side. Armin tips his head back and again is met with a silhouette; this time, it is of the other boy climbing up the side of the lifeguard’s tower, craning over to grab some things from a first aid kit.

“Your friends are all worried about you,” he says as he jumps back down into the sand. Armin notices several things at that point: he is drenched in water and likewise, the boy who held him up on the beach is not just another swimmer.

He feels the heat in his face before anything else. “You’re a lifeguard.” His voice is weak, and Mikasa’s grip underneath his shoulders tightens at the sound of it.

“I’m Jean,” he says, a faint smile on his face, “but, yes—you’re right.” His smile makes the rest of his face come alive, bright eyes and rosy cheeks and somehow, fuller lips. But his brows crease with worry almost instantly, and Mikasa steps away from his side. Armin’s knees buckle for a moment, and Jean’s hands are at his back and inching up his chest, bare.

“What—”

Jean quiets him instantly with a finger held up to his lips, so Armin shifts to the side and allows Jean to slowly lower him to the base of the lifeguard tower. There are waves carved into the marble surrounding the chair where he sits on his corner of the beach, and a small station located an equal distance away from the next lifeguard. For a moment, Jean’s hands align against his chest and Armin can feel the rise and fall of his breath in his hands.

“You were pulled under a current.” His voice is quiet, the words almost foreign to him. There is an accent in his voice, a slight of words that the other boy is sure to pronounce carefully. “You’re a strong swimmer, but there was no way to be prepared for that.”

He moves his hand away from his chest for a fleeting moment, and then there is something cold and metal against his chest. Jean’s hand against his back contains the shiver that passes through him, and then he is quietly telling him to breathe, quietly listening to the sounds of his lungs like seashells.

Armin hiccups, but he breathes, and listens to the sounds of the ocean.

 **…**  
**ii.** [there’s something deep in the air](https://youtu.be/uW_ysmivrFU)  
…[](https://youtu.be/uW_ysmivrFU)  


It is only slightly possible that Armin has a crush on Jean, the lifeguard. Slightly, because he gets a variety of responses when he reveals this new information to his best friends.

With a steady gaze, Eren braces his hands on his shoulders with a laugh bitten down into the corner of his lips. “You’re sucking too much water down your throat, man.”

Mikasa is packing their bags for their fifth day at the beach for their spring break, because if she has to ask Eren to remember to bring sunblock again, she may as well ask him to carry their whole group of friends their on his sunburnt shoulders.

Armin laughs, tying his hair back into a knot, and tries to focus his eyes somewhere so his cheeks don’t burn as brightly.

“There’s no _way_ you could like him.”

“Eren.” Mikasa’s voice is stern, but her eyes are soft for Armin, in a way they have always been since they were children playing in the sandbox together. Eren doesn’t want to, but he acquiesces to the rapidly darkening look of chastisement across her features.

There are thin braids at the edges of her hair, and there are sunglasses resting on the crown of her head, and for someone so threatening, she looks so casual as she sits in the middle of Eren’s lap. “Jean’s cute,” she says, finally, to the grumbling protest of Eren beneath her, “and he saved your life.”

“You only like him because he saved your life,” Eren adds with a whine, but Mikasa snags the base of her heel against his shin, and it sends Eren running and yelping and Mikasa falling and laughing out of the room.

It is only slightly possible that Armin has a crush on Jean, the lifeguard. Slightly, except it is completely possible, because he _does_ ; by the time the three of them arrive to the beach at noon, the rest of their group is gathered around three umbrellas anchored in the sand and several rows of towels spread out around them.

Once Eren props their towels underneath their umbrella, he takes off running towards the ocean, tearing his clothes over his head as he goes. Connie, Sasha, Ymir, and Krista are all already in the water, yelling and laughing and pushing each other over into the shallow waves.

And Armin doesn’t mean to exercise caution—the ocean has always been his safe haven, but the waves feel so different around his waist now; they feel volatile and dangerous and ready to rend him into shreds and so different from the solace he once knew them as—but he is comfortable with his book at Mikasa’s side, comfortable reading to her as she smiles and listens to Eren cursing at Connie over saltwater waves and Armin’s soft, lullaby voice.

By the time lunch rolls around, nearly everyone in their group knows about his crush on Jean, and nearly everyone in their group decides to do something about it.

“Are you kidding?” Armin’s face floods with color and disbelief, but Eren doesn’t look any more ashamed for spreading the news than he had about his opinions earlier, so Armin simply holds his head in his hands and rubs his temples.

“It’s cute,” Krista says, her voice barely louder than the argument brewing between Connie and Sasha over whether or not Sasha has an opinion on what the lifeguards on the beach look like, “I think you’d be cute together, Armin.”

“It’s—ah,” he coughs for a moment, praying that the blush leaks from his face soon, “I haven’t even spoken to him since then, I just—I don’t know, I just _like_ him, all right?”

“Who?”

The resounding silence of their group suddenly forewarns Armin to the presence of someone behind him, and he shirks down before he turns his head over his shoulder, mentally berating himself for even _saying_ anything about it any further.

Jean is standing behind him, but this time, he does not eclipse the sun and Armin can see him perfectly: beautiful grey eyes and soft, sandy hair that slips into his eyes. The sides of his head are shaved, kind of the way Connie had once cut his hair before he lost a bet and shaved the rest of it off, and the memory of the buzz from the hair clippers brings a smile to his face.

It isn’t until Jean mimics the smile on his face that Armin shakes himself from the reverie, and flushes. “No one,” he affirms with a nod of his head, with his toes pressed in the sand, trying to disappear, for all intents and purposes.

But Jean doesn’t leave. “I just wanted to talk to you,” he starts, and the group starts to dwindle, “I wanted to know how you were doing.”

Armin stands, and with a half-smile, tips his head towards Jean. Before he can speak, though, Eren collides with him and slings an arm around his shoulders.

“He’s fine,” Eren cups his shoulder with the palm of his hand, glares so heavily at Jean that his demeanor changes. “Thanks, but you don’t have to bother him, you know.”

Jean’s face curls into distaste and something negative brims in the back of his throat, but luckily enough, Mikasa’s hand around Eren’s waist pulls him away, an exasperated look on her face. “Hi, Jean,” she says smoothly, and digs her nails into Eren’s side simultaneously, “don’t worry about him, he’s gone off the deep end.”

“What else is new?” Jean mumbles, and Eren’s cry of betrayal and frustration is muffled by Mikasa’s taut facial expression, though it shifts into a soft smile for Armin before she pulls Eren back towards the rest of their group.

Armin lifts his shoulders in a half-shrug before pushing a flyaway strand of hair behind his ears. “So,” he says with a private smile, “so, I mean, I’ve been doing good—well, even. I didn’t know you were friends with Mikasa,” he adds as an afterthought.

Jean smiles, and Armin is fixated on the straight line of his teeth. “I met Mikasa a few summers ago in a French class.” He pauses for a moment, a laugh pressing at the back of his throat. “We became pretty fast friends, but our last summer of classes, I made a joke about giving her CPR on the beach in her yearbook and that was how I met Eren.”

His nose crinkles and Armin laughs, because he can picture it; the bubbling rage in Eren’s face and the explosive screaming and the irrational need to break out into a fistfight as soon as manageable. Especially over Mikasa, he thinks, though she is the one who is more formidable out of the group of them.

“Sounds like Eren.” Armin nods solemnly, then offers a bright smile again. “I’ve been doing well, though. A little worried about swimming anytime soon, though.”

Jean blinks: short lashes, moon-wide eyes, overcast with clouds. And then he reaches out to press his palm into the warmth of his skin, fingers imprinted into his shoulder, before a smile blooms across his lips. Armin can’t quite explain the way it unfolds, like a bud to a flower, like rain from the clouds—so slow and beautiful and subtle yet breathtaking.

“I would never let anything happen to you. Do you believe that?”

He doesn’t know why, but Armin nods. It seems true; everything within him says it is.

“Swim with me, then.”

 **…**  
**iii.** [you should just be with me on this beautiful night](https://youtu.be/ytXJkEF0-MI)  
…[](https://youtu.be/ytXJkEF0-MI)  


The water is colder at night, but the air is warm and Armin smiles at the waves that curl against his thighs. Swimming after the beach is closed mean he can see the moon pooled in the water, feel it in his blood pushing through his veins like the tides. It makes Jean smile, to see him smile.

“Every night,” he says with his hands cradling his gently, “I’ll come with you every night until you’re comfortable with swimming again.”

He leads them into the ocean like a dance, swaying with their hands clasped together, minds open underneath the starry sky. Armin doesn’t know if there is a depth he will reach to measure his comfort, but he thinks if he closed his eyes and simply let Jean lead him, that he would drown all over again.

But Jean promises, and he follows through.

Armin explains himself to Mikasa in bits and pieces. Jean is teaching him to push his fears into the sand, reminding him of the little boy that was willing to fall into the ocean if it meant that he would become part of the sea and it would become part of him, too. She smiles because she remembers him this way; picking up seashells and wondering if she could hear the world through them the way he seemed to.

In the end, she covers for him by lulling Eren back to sleep as he slips out of their apartment and down to the beach.

The closer he comes to the end of his spring break, though, Armin gives up on swimming. Instead, on the second to last night, he collapses on the shore, knees digging into the wet sand. The waves curl up at his sides, lapping over his fingers as he presses them down in front of him. And Jean panics for a moment before he catches his breath and falls down beside him, face twisted in worry.

“Armin.” His voice is quiet and heavy and exactly how Armin remembers waking up to it on the beach. “You have to go soon, don’t you?”

He doesn’t want to. But when he lifts his eyes to watch Jean, he finds that Jean is already watching him with a melancholy weight that takes the breath from his lungs instantaneously. Armin doesn’t know what it is, but he knows something is wrong, he knows that Jean knows something he doesn’t know.

He doesn’t speak immediately.

Armin simply watches him with dark eyes, like the ocean.

“I messed up.” He almost sounds like he is on the verge of tears, but Jean is _laughing_ , in the sad way that people do when they become tired, when the only other option is to cry instead. “I messed this up, Armin, and now you have to go, soon.”

Silence sits between them for a moment. “I don’t get it…”

Jean laughs, and takes Armin’s hands again. The tide rolls up around them and sweeps through Armin, a cold chill in his bones. He waits for Jean to say something, to explain himself, but he never does.

Armin doesn’t ask again.

 **…**  
**iv.** [lying around as the world comes down](https://youtu.be/uW_ysmivrFU)  
…[](https://youtu.be/uW_ysmivrFU)  


“I can’t believe this break is over after tomorrow,” Eren laments over a mouthful of cereal. Mikasa has already begun the morning ritual of gathering all of their belongings for their final trip to the beach, and Armin is neatly tucking away into a cooked breakfast while Eren shovels facefuls of cinnamon cereal into his mouth.

“Yeah,” he agrees wistfully, “I don’t think I’m ready to start school up again. At least we have one more day at the beach.”

Eren doesn’t quite get a chance to express his disdain for the beach’s visitors and employees, because Mikasa waltzes into the kitchen, a wide-brimmed hat pressed onto her head, eyes fixed on Eren. He doesn’t mean to laugh, but Eren wilts completely at the sight of Mikasa, and Armin can’t quite shake how entertaining it is to watch, even after all of these years.

The beach is beautiful. Sunlight skims off the sand perfectly, and Armin relishes in the feeling of the cool water over his feet. And it seems as if everyone notices, because he is swept up into the ocean with his friends, laughing and playing and shouting.

It seems natural to him for a while, but he can feel the rhythmic pulse of the ocean water in the base of his stomach, and Armin is still far from one hundred percent. But between Connie trying to climb on Sasha’s shoulders and Krista trying to hide behind Ymir, it almost helps him to forget about having to read nearly every day since his near drowning.

It feels strange to be in the water without Jean; he notes to Mikasa the brand new lifeguard that sits atop the tower on their side of the beach with a slightly disappointed sigh, but he resolves to enjoy their last day on the beach. And he does, for the most part. The water is perfect and everyone is happy and for the rest of their time there, school seems like a looming threat with no real weight to it.

But as they pack up their things to amble off of the beach by sunset, Armin sees Jean.

He looks almost unrecognizable. His fingers scratch at the shaved edges of his hair, and he can see black polish painted and chipping from his nails; his ears are stretched with gauges that he never quite noticed any other time they swam together—probably for the sake that they weren’t there in the first place because of his work attire. But he looks so different that it catches Armin off guard completely.

Jean catches sight of him immediately. “Armin,” the relief in his voice is palpable, “listen. Stay here on the beach with me, just for a little while.”

 **…**  
**v.** [set me free, my honeybee](https://youtu.be/ojYK6CW8gdw)  
…[](https://youtu.be/ojYK6CW8gdw)  


Dancing, a sweet summer smile. A sky falling down, a sky engulfed in flames, warm hands touching his skin. Armin feels the dream within him, knows he is living it in this moment. The sun is setting and his heart is sinking, lying at the bottom of the ocean, a discarded shell. But he smiles anyway, and dances, and ignores how sad he feels.

Jean’s fingers are thin but perfectly laced between his, and he sings a song that sounds tragic and beautiful and warm, like the sun against his face. His other hand is at his waist, crawling at the slant of his hip, prickling the skin there with soft fingernails.

He can feel it welling up within him, but he thinks that Jean can too, because he simply sings louder, a beautiful, smoky voice, a volume loud enough to drown his thoughts in. He thinks it makes sense, but it doesn’t. Armin doesn’t get it; he doesn’t get how he can be on the brink of death in a dream where he drowns.

He doesn’t understand why he has to nearly die to love this much. “That’s not true,” Jean says when Armin cries out, “I loved you this much already. You loved me this much already, too.”

And it doesn’t help him; Armin can’t imagine a world where he dies without seeing the beach or without pressing his fingers into the sand or where Jean dies and he can’t save him—except that is _exactly_ where they are, now. He is living in a world where Jean is already dead and he is only asleep.

“How do you know?”

Armin wonders, and Jean simply shrugs. “I just know. I know you’ll disappear tomorrow, that you’ll be alive, there. I think I know because I’ve already died.”

It doesn’t make sense to him. But Armin knows he can’t wrap his thoughts around it. He simply worries; worries that he will let go too soon, worries that Jean will slip away from him in this dream and he will come crashing into a reality without him.

He worries more that he will come crashing into a reality where they aren’t in love with each other.

“Don’t cry,” he whispers between lines of a song that sings the kind of love Armin has only read about in books, the kind he has always promised he would experience. “I saved your life.”

Armin tucks his head down against Jean’s shoulder, but he doesn’t let go of his hand. “I saved your life,” he says in that secret, yet brittle voice, “I had the chance to save your life, here, and I don’t regret it. So, just—”

He doesn’t finish. Instead, he presses his lips to Armin’s temple and sings into his ear softly. Cradles him gently, sways the two of them slowly in the sand. And thought Armin wants to cry, he can’t quite find it within himself to let the tears fall. So he smiles, and takes a step back just to catch the view of it all: the beach and the sun glittering off the sand and the way the sky looks and the way Jean looks at him, like he has breathed life into him for a second time.

Armin closes his eyes, and dances until he falls asleep. 

  



End file.
